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Posts Tagged ‘mobile’

While the Wall Street types are figuring out whether to invest in Twitter’s IPO or wait to buy in, journalists, PR professionals and marketers have been figuring out if and how to invest in Vine, Twitter’s emerging micro-video service. It’s just another example of adapting social media strategy to an ever-evolving landscape of tools.

With Twitter’s hotly-anticipated $1.4 billion early November #IPO trending in the investor community, the company’s micro-video sharing app Vine, which integrates into Twitter and Facebook feeds, is heating up with journalists and advertisers. The app, which takes six-second videos and bets on a short attention span, has taken off so quickly that NowThis News, a mobile news service, has hired a Vine video journalist.

By hiring its first Vine journalist, NowThis News, a year-old network with an 18- to 34-year-old niche market, is betting that video news in Vine’s six-second micro-video loop will be as successful as Twitter’s 140-character text format. Their Vine journalist, Cody Johns, now commands more than 1 million followers on his Vine account.

Vine, which was acquired by Twitter in October 2012, lets users shoot six-second videos and share them on Vine, Twitter and Facebook. It has been seeing success with a steady increase in users, climbing the free app charts with an August overall app rank of No. 18, according to Onavo, an app analytics company. Vine says that its community numbered 40 million active users in August.

NowThis News uses Vine to put out political news, with Vines of Sen. John McCain’s position on Russia’s involvement in the Syrian situation. Vine Journalist Johns, speaking on CNN Reliable Sources, said that NowThis News is working to get more politicians to do six-second Vines. “Vine is geared toward a young audience between ages 13 and 26. [They] need to be exposed to politics and Vine is the perfect medium for them,” Johns said of their targeted demographic.

And since just 5 percent of people younger than 30 closely follow news on Washington and politics, political journalists trying to reach such a demographic might want to invest in creating Vines.

Other news outlets are also finding Vine a useful news gathering and delivery tool. Meaghan Anselm of KSDK-TV in St. Louis says her newsroom uses Vine to find story ideas by searching local hashtags. KSDK-TV is also using Vine in its own marketing by showcasing newsroom personalities and behind-the-scenes news-gathering processes in a bid to gain viewership. “People think it is just a light-hearted, fun thing, but you can get serious content from [Vine],” Anselm says.

For journalists, PR professionals and marketers with an existing Twitter and Facebook presence and who are looking to more successfully reach a younger demographic more responsive to a micro-video content strategy, integration of Vine into their present social media mix could maximize Twitter and Facebook followers.

Though Vine is an app for Android and iOS, it integrates nicely with Twitter and Facebook, allowing for a useful role on those platforms and for both mobile and desktop viewing.

For NowThis News, the Vine’s six-second video format has proven more successful than its Twitter distribution, capturing 107,300 Vine followers compared to 23,250 on Twitter. And with Vine’s integration into its Twitter feed, NowThis News can leverage its Vine followers to help extend its Twitter reach. It can also better leverage Vine journalist Johns’ 1 million Vine followers to boost the following of the news organization itself. The Vine format has also proven more successful than its Instagram video strategy, where the news service has 53,000 followers.

How is your social media strategy evolving with a constantly changing social media landscape? Has adaptability been your policy when it comes to your social media strategy? Are you seeing a disparity in followers between your social platforms? What are your examples of cross-leveraging social media platforms to fight those disparities?

Marketers and public relations practitioners have long known that storytelling is critical to any campaign. Storytelling is about relating to people, about making a connection with your audience. PR has long been a text-based, word-driven method of communicating messages, but it’s no longer enough to simply broadcast these written messages. “PR historically has been about words—telling. Now it’s show and tell,” says Richard Edelman, president and CEO of Edelman in a recent AdWeek article.

I’ve read copious articles in the past year on the “new trend” of visual storytelling. Articles that point out we are a society of “visual learners.” Visual storytelling classes have recently been added to university course catalogs, professional development and continuing education workshops and webinars are abundant. Infographics have become a popular way to socially share messages in the past couple years. Some say this shift is due to how we consume information and communicate in the digital mobile age. But I say this is a trend that actually began more than a hundred years ago!

Over the holidays, my husband and I watched the History Channel mini-series “Mankind The Story of All of Us” that we had DVR’d. In the final episode, they talk about the Congo rubber trade in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s under King Leopold II’s dictatorship and the brutishness of forced labor. A common occurrence was to physically maim children as a warning to villagers. Enter Alice Harris, a British missionary, and her camera. (I know you were wondering where I was going with this J).

Brian Williams, of NBC Nightly News (and one of the commentators in the series) says, “The invention of photography and the means to get them in front of people held more power than its inventors ever imagined. Photos don’t blink and they don’t go away. Once you’ve seen that image, you can’t rewind.” Harris took hundreds of photos of the atrocities—photos which were then published in newspapers across the world, shocking millions of readers. These photographs were so horrific and communicated so broadly that it transformed public opinion and changed society, forcing King Leopold to quit the Congo rubber trade. I would argue that this was the beginning of visual storytelling—at least in the modern mass media age. (Visual storytelling actually dates back to more than 30,000 years ago with cave paintings.)

In addition, “Once you’ve seen that image, you can’t rewind,” Williams went on to say, “The expression ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ –that’s a low ball estimate. A picture, a good picture, is worth so much more than that.”

This is especially true in today’s digital age. As PR and communications professionals we are increasingly tasked with disseminating messages in a crowded online space. The content we produce must not only gain the attention of audiences – but keep it as well.

Like our ancestors, we must create stories that paint pictures – either via our words or via images – to sway public opinion and, perhaps more importantly, persuades people to respond to our calls to action.

Despite what some proponents contend, traditional media is not dead. In truth – it’s not even on life support. Sure, The Media has changed in scope (with the biggest decline in outlets occurring in 2009), but certainly not in respect to relevancy, and absolutely NOT in how news consumers access content and satiate their growing appetite.

Why do I think so? “A mounting body of evidence finds that the spread of mobile technology is adding to news consumption, strengthening the appeal of traditional news brands and even boosting reading of long-form journalism,” confirms The PEW Research Center in its State of the News Media 2012.

The PEW study shows, “27 percent of the population now gets news on mobile devices. And these mobile news consumers are even more likely to turn to news organizations directly, through apps and homepages, rather than search or recommendations – strengthening the bond with traditional brands.”

Our changing media consumption habits are augmenting, not diminishing, the importance of traditional media. Largely in part to how today’s audiences access The Media across multiple platforms and channels rather than simply swapping one media type for the other.

What’s even more interesting is that mobile users tend to favor traditional media values even when using digital platforms to access the content. For example, “The data also found that the reputation or brand of a news organization, a very traditional idea, is the most important factor in determining where consumers go for news, and that is even truer for mobile devices than on laptops or desktops,” according to Amy Mitchell and Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, and Leah Christian of the Pew Research Center in Mobile Devices and News Consumption: Some Good Signs for Journalism.

Despite the growth of social media, the brand reputation of traditional media (which also has a social ecosystem) has more influence on audiences – exceeding shares on social networks, including Facebook and Twitter, and even those made by friends.

So, the next time you read a tweet or hear about the demise of traditional media, try to put it in perspective and remember that unless you are seeing your coverage from ALL types of media, you won’t have an accurate representation of how your messages are playing out and influencing ALL of your audiences. While I recommend stakeholder targeting related to your goals and initiatives, all forms of an outlet should be part of your sample or you are skewing your data and results of a high level of integrity based on sampling. Ironically, in an effort to be trendy, some organizations focus solely on digital. However a digital focus alone, that doesn’t include traditional media, is blindingly misleading and can be equated to looking at the Grand Canyon through a straw. Sure, it’s pretty, but you miss more than you see!

Hearst Claims Nearly 2000% Increase in Mobile Traffic in a Year “Touting growth in its mobilized audience, the Hearst Digital Media group says traffic coming from devices to its portfolio of sites has grown from 5% in April 2011 to 19% in 2012. That 2000% increase in mobile access is not spread consistently across all platforms, however.” (minonline)

Circulation Report: Analysis of Latest Figures from the ABC“the FAS-FAX circulation report, which reflects topline numbers for the six months ending March 31, shows that digital circulation made up an average of 14.2 percent of all news publishers’ counted products, up from 8.66 percent in March 2011.” (Editor and Publisher)

SoLoMo is short for Social-Local-Mobile, referring to the amalgamation of social, local and mobile. It represents the growing trend of targeting consumers based on their current location and is typically designed to be shared via social networks.

According to a presentation by Casey Knox at AREA203 Digital, businesses with 100 or more social media fans see an eight percent higher click-through rate and 125 percent higher conversion rates. Her presentation states that one in five searches has local intent and 80 percent of mobile internet users prefer ads locally relevant to them. She also states that 70 percent of all mobile searches result in action within one hour. Those are some pretty power statistics.

If you’re still not convinced that you need to pay attention to the growing SoLoMo trend, a mobile commerce study performed by BIA/Kelsey indicates, by the year 2015, local search volume via smartphones and tablets will have exceeded that from desktops. Personally, I’m not sure it will take that long.

In fact, Nielsen and NM Incite published an infographic entitled, “The Most Valuable Digital Customers,” last Fall that shows consumers’ social, local and mobile consumption habits and how these interrelate. Some statistics to note:

66 percent of smartphone users say they access social media from somewhere other than home—at work, in the car, in airports, etc.

38 percent of connected device owners looked up product info for an ad while watching TV on their smartphone or tablet.

62 percent of U.S. adults online used their TV and internet at the same time.

51 percent of social media users say they were influenced by standard web ads on social media sites that show which of their friends liked or followed the advertised brand.

Nearly all mobile internet users visit portals.

In a Search Engine Watch post, Lisa Buyer states it well, “Fish where the fish are. Taking your social PR message to the market works best when you take the message to the mobile market.” She goes on to state, “Publicizing events, news, and promotions to the mobile market becomes increasingly important for online marketers and brands. The social revolution is driving a paradigm shift in technology use and online public relations and social media campaigns need to go with the SoLoMo flow.”

It seems that SoLoMo can help you bring ultra-precise targeting of your campaigns—allowing you to reach the right people at the right time with the right offer. How are you taking advantage of social-local-mobile for your brand?